Gerrit van Dijk (5 December 1938 â 4 December 2012) was a Dutch animator, film maker, actor and painter.
Gerrit van Dijk was born in a Catholic family in the village of Volkel, in the municipality of Uden. He studied as a fifteen-year-old boy at the academy in Tilburg. He was not very satisfied about the school. "You only learn technique. The creativity you learn is no creativity at all. You know exactly what colour socks you should wear and what your hair should look like, but not how to put something on paper." After finishing his study, he initially became a teacher, then became a painter who frequently collaborated with other artists from other disciplines.
His painting career ended abruptly when he saw Norman McLaren's films and bought a double-eight camera. He made his first film It's Good in Heaven, seeing his shift to film as a logical continuation of his work as a painter, and considered his films moving paintings. In 1963 van Dijk married Cilia van Lieshout, a film producer who won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Over time, Dijk moved away from classic filmmaking, instead creating collages combining photographs and image-by-image technique. He also experimented with various techniques, including cels, cut-outs, rotoscopy, pixilation, and live action combined with animation. He also joined a theatre group called Orkater that was set in Haarlem, Netherlands.
Dijk's films Pas a Deux and I move, so I am earned him Golden Bears at the Film Festspiele, Berlin in 1989 and 1998, respectively. He also received the Order of the Dutch Lion from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in 1998.
On 4 December 2012, van Dijk died from lung cancer.